


Each Other

by quigonejinn



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-04
Updated: 2013-09-04
Packaged: 2017-12-25 13:57:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/953913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quigonejinn/pseuds/quigonejinn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The one where Lucky Seven finds Mako Mori in the rubble.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Each Other

**Author's Note:**

> Conceived in screaming chat with [destronomics](http://destronomics.tumblr.com) and [ferricent](http://ferricent.tumblr.com/).

There is a universe where the order goes San Francisco, Manila, Cabo, Tokyo, Sydney.

There is another universe where the order goes San Francisco, Sydney, Manila, Cabo, Tokyo: Lucky Seven finds Mako Mori in the rubble because Hercules Hansen tells his brother that he can’t take another bloody minute of recycled air. He climbs out of the hatch at the top. He sees a spot of bright blue and thinks it might be blood from Scissure, but instead, it’s a kid in a blue coat, holding her hand up to keep the sun out of her eyes. 

A year short of a decade later, Mako Mori gets up from a canteen table. 

"My brother runs his mouth," she says, quietly. She has a thick accent, mostly Japanese, with a dose of Australian, mixed with the local accent of every Shatterdome she’s lived in since the age of twelve: these are the first words that Raleigh has heard from her. 

Raleigh blinks at her. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Hansen look down at his tray, shoulders hunched. 

"But get in the way of us closing the Breach, Becket, and I’ll personally drop you like a second kaiju shit."

Max follows at her heels.

…

After the disastrous first Drift with Bei Liang, Chuck comes stalking out of Pentecost’s office, anger written in every line of his body. He gets three steps down the hallway when he turns on his heel, comes back, and makes comments about how he doesn’t want to die. He’s quite fond of his — life, and when he finally finds the words to provoke Raleigh into swinging for him, Raleigh doesn’t end up using a leg pin on Chuck Hansen. Why would he? Bei Liang trained in the school of Bak Mei and they’re fresh off Raleigh slipping into her memory of watching a Category-3 make landfall in an undefended Shanghai. Raleigh finds himself performing what Bei tells him, later, is a classic joint lock — the way he grabs Hansen’s wrist with one hand, upper arm with the other, and rotating the arm with his body weight. 

Raleigh lets go when the office door opens and Pentecost comes out roaring.

Chuck tries to push past Mako to get to Raleigh, and she shoves him back. He tries to push past her again, and then she shoves him, hard. She snarls in Japanese, _You’re a Ranger. Start acting like one_. 

Face still red with anger, Chuck steps back.

…

Mako and Chuck have Drifted enough that Chuck has picked up basic Japanese. Mako described it as: _sometimes, he orders when we’re in Tokyo. Sometimes, we get what we asked for._

…

Here is a memory that Mako sees in the Drift with her brother: Chuck is lying on his side in the dark, supposedly asleep or at the very least in bed. In the other room, his father is telling Pentecost that he can’t leave the girl with the aid agency. The door is closed, but Herc Hansen is angry. Does Stack know where they’re going to put her? A group home. No good at the best of times, but what are they going to look like after this? She doesn’t have any family — her father died of lung cancer when she was ten, and her mother died when — when — she has family down on the islands, but they doesn’t want her because she’s a girl. Mako is in the bed next to Chuck, breathing slow and deep. Her face is turned to the wall; her back is wedged against Chuck’s side. Chuck has a black eye from Mako; Mako’s lip is split from him knocking her down. Chuck is holding her hand, and Mako is letting him. Herc Hansen is speaking in English and avoiding using nouns that will tip Mako off that he has fight to keep her safe. 

Chuck grins a little in the dark. Mako has an idea: she actually bit the woman from the aid agency who came in the afternoon. 

…

Here is a memory that Chuck sees in the Drift with his sister: she is fifteen and a half, basically, essentially, virtually sixteen and has a crush on Uncle Scott. 

…

Five hours after Gipsy Danger comes back, safe and sound, Stacker hears a knock on his door — not the door chime, but an actual knock, and it’s the middle of the night. When he opens it, he finds Mako. There is blue in her hair, and she knew to look for him not in his formal office with the handsome shelves of art and bare concrete walls, where he meets with visiting brass and hands out discipline, but the cramped space where he actually works.

"Well, Ranger?" he asks.

"I’m asking about Drift assignments." 

"You’ll Drift with your brother," he says.

She snorts and sounds like her brother, and then she tilts her head back to look him the eyes. Mako is wearing the gray-green of the closed Sydney Shatterdome; her lip is split, and there is a cut on her forehead being held together by a butterfly stitch. ”I know Chuck's collarbone is broken. He isn’t getting into a motion harness for months. How much time does K-Science think we have? Days? Hours?”

Stacker looks at her, and she looks at him. 

"It’s going to be us," she says. "You had more exposure than Dad did. You’re dying."

Stacker doesn’t say anything: when he had been congratulating Becket and Bei Liang, his nose started bleeding, and he didn’t know it was happening until he saw the look on the face of a woman, a technician in communications, guessing by the tabs and pins on her collar. 

Who does Stacker Pentecost have? 

"A long time ago, you did Dad a favor," Mako says, stepping close to him. "You got the PPDC to kick Uncle Scott out of the Rangers. You’re planning to do him another one by getting into the Jaeger." She pauses. "What’s one for me, old man? We only have one shot at Drifting well enough to get to the Breach." 

"You’re an angry, angry woman, Miss Mori," Stacker says back to her. 

Mako leans forward and kisses him. He doesn’t pull away, so she puts her arms around his neck.

…

Electrical systems are down in Striker, and Chuck disengages from his motion harness even though he shouldn’t. Leatherback knocks into the Jaeger, and Chuck goes down hard. He screams. Mako helps him back up and they look at each other — they can still hear the Jaeger echoing around them from Leatherback’s hit. 

"What would our old man say?" Mako says, struggling to put Chuck back onto his feet. 

"We’re the only thing standing between that kaiju and a city of seven million people," Chuck says, face white with pain, but managing to imitate a little of the way their father talks. Or is it he sounds more like their dad in moments of crisis? Chuck moves in slightly the wrong way, gasps in pain, and they consider each other for a moment. Then, Mako goes over to the flare gun compartment, knocks it open, and gets two flare guns. She carries them both up to the roof with Chuck following behind her, gritting his teeth against the feeling of raw bone ends grinding against other. 

…

In the hallway, Chuck has a sling, and Herc holds the leash on Max. Even in her Driftsuit boots, Mako has to lean up onto her toes to kiss Chuck on the cheek. She kisses Herc Hansen on the cheek, too, and leans her head against his shoulder: he smells like soap and laundry and his old Lucky Seven vest that no amount of soap and laundry could ever make smell clean again. Mako was dazed for months after Scissure, and she didn’t know English. She had a vague understanding of the lengths he went to, fighting Stacker Pentecost, fighting PPDC, fighting common sense, to keep her out of a group home, but she has Chuck’s memories to fill in the gaps. She can rely on her own memories for the fact that he saved her in Lucky Seven, and when he found out that his brother was —

Mako breathes out. 

She kisses Max, tells him that she’ll miss him, then walks through to the Conn-Pod to her Jaeger. 

…

"That’s my daughter — "

…

_I take nothing into the Drift_ , Stacker tells Mako.

_We’ll have each other,_ Mako tells him, and as Scunner bears down on them, she flips the manual self-detonate.


End file.
